For the first time in my two visits to Northern Iraq I experienced gun fire. As always with my travels in Iraq I must remind the reader of the context of my work there. I am not a hardcore war journalist. I am a traveler if you will - I most certainly avoid hostilities the best I can. I am a cultural writer if you wish. 

    Military folks, hardcore Afghanistan and Iraq war correspondents, and contractors, please forgive my digression into what you experience daily ad nauseam. But I must defer to my audience who most of which I am thinking are like me - we do not experience gun fire every day. 

    It has been over 35 years since I was in the Combat Engineers. I am too busy to hunt. When I heard the bangs while waiting at one of a hundred checkpoints I had gone through I thought, "Damn, that sounds like an AK-47" - distinct sound. When I looked up from some notes I had taken, I saw a Peshmerga (Kurdish ) soldier fire a second volley of shots over a car about five cars up in the line. The soldiers apparently wanted a couple guys to exit the departing car. 

    My driver did not even flinch. This is a driver I originally had second thoughts about. When I met him, his young minions were trying to rebuild his carburetor with a jack knife. He looked a couple years younger than me. He was in full Kurdish head gear and native baggy pants with thick cloth belt. His full beard complimented the presentation. He wore bifocals. 

    In my mind I named him "Pops." 

    "Great," I thought, "I have been assigned an old driver my age with a junk car to go over the mountains. And, an old guy like this has probably never used a cell phone." 

    "Pops" never got under 75 miles per hour. He negotiated around truck after lumbering truck on blind mountain curves and knolls for 100 miles. He waited patiently while I was detained at three different mountain check points. He periodically used two different cell phones to stay in touch with his taxi-mafia people. When the shooting started, he kept his cool. His lit another cigarette and changed the Kurdish music track on the cassette player. The truck in front of us panicked and veered into the oncoming lane further irritating the Peshmerga guards. 

    The two perps were led into the guard shack at gun point. The vehicle in question was sent on its way - no guilt by association in Kurdistan I guess. I was detained one more time for posterity sake. The guard looked at my passport upside down. "Pops" spoke to the young soldier in quiet, calm words. The soldier smiled, "Pops" and I we were both sent on our way.

    Later on down the road, at my safe little flophouse room above an Internet shop, I had a few moments to reflect at the reality of the situation. At the time of the shooting it was like watching television.  I remember thinking, "Hey, a shoot-out. Wounder what's going to happen next?"  In reality, I was only a few feet from the developing situation. A nervous perp with a pistol here, a bad guy with a machine gun there, a hand grenade added in; no doubt no one would be too surprised if several bystanders and their cars were..., "all blowed up." 

    Then as I got the television going in my tiny room by wiggling some wires, I thought about "Pops" in the context of his viewpoint. If I did not fall victim to any other shoot-outs, I would be heading home in a few weeks.

    Here's to you "Pops." You're a better man than I am. You have to do it all over again tomorrow.  You are already at home.

Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).